How Glazers destroyed Manchester United

As we all know football is considered the best sport in the world and Manchester United is the greatest club in the English Premier League. Was at its peak in 2005 when Malcolm Glazer, a member of the Glazer Family got 100% ownership of the club which started with a 3% stake in the club back in 2003. How it is all a mess and why fans were against the Glazers taking over the club will be discussed thoroughly.

Debt

The real reason why Glazers are considered the culprit for the downfall of Manchester United is because despite having billions of dollars in their name they didn’t pay their own money to complete the takeover instead they use leverage buyout means they took a loan of £660 million from 3 different New York-based hedge funds.

From that £660 million, £265 million to £275 million was secured against Manchester United’s assets, which means Glazers will pay the money to the lenders from the club’s revenue. Putting the club under debt for the first time since 1931. Apart from that now the club has to pay £62 million per year as interest, which leads the fans to anger as well.

Efforts to overcome the debt

The Glazer's efforts to overcome debt started in 2010 when they issued bonds worth around £500 million with interest of 8.75% and 8.375% with interest payable on bonds were around £45 million with bonds due to mature on 1st of February 2017.

And also in 2012 when they decided to sell almost 10% of shares on the New York Stock Exchange, at least this is what we all think is happening, but the reality is not what we expected it to be.

They divided the shares into two classes, class A is what is traded regularly on the stock market while class B is what is called premium shares which are entirely owned by the Glazers family and have 10 times the voting rights of the A-share. While they will get dividends for the shares pushing the narrative as they use the club to fill their banks.

Wrong Appointments

Even after the Glazer's complete takeover in 2005 club is still performing well on the field because of the brilliance of Sir Alex Ferguson and with the helping hand of CEO David Gill winning 15 trophies from 2005–06 to 2012–13 until Sir Alex retired and David Gill was replaced by Ed Woodward. And David Moyes was appointed as a new manager which was a wrong call as well.

Woodward was given a chance in the club’s commercial and media operations in 2007 and helped the club's commercial revenue to grow from £48 million in 2005 to £117 million in 2012. He was an excellent spreadsheet guy but lacks in football knowledge, in his first season as a CEO club didn't perform well. The former champions finished 7th in the 13–14 season.

After that, it's all downhill for Man Utd as they only manage to win only 6 trophies in the next 9 seasons with no EPL and UCL and remain trophyless for 5 seasons from 2017–18 to 2021–22. New managers come and go without making any real influence. In 2014, the newly appointed manager Louis van Gaal complained, that the team’s excessive commercial activities could hamper the team's success. This indicated that Man Utd is on its way to becoming a commercial club that just wants money, not the team’s performance.

Outdated infrastructure

If we talk about infrastructure like the stadium, training facilities for the players, everything is outdated. While in the last 2 decades Arsenal, Man City, and Spurs have built new stadiums, and Liverpool and Chelsea pressed ahead with redevelopment plans. There is nothing new in United’s stadium.

One of the only things the club has done after the Glazer’s takeover is an alteration in 2016 to improve access to wheelchair entrance in the stadium, but still, in recent years fans have called out Glazers as the roof of the stadium leaked during a game. And fans believe that the stadium is no longer worthy of being called the home of Man Utd.

If we talk about the training facilities for the players this is what Cristiano Ronaldo said in his recent interview with Piers Morgan,” When I signed for Man Utd I think everything will be changed, because it's 13 years. But I was surprised in a bad way because everything was the same. In the United, the progress is almost zero.”

He also added that” In my opinion, the owners (The Glazers) don't care about the club .”

Glazers to sell the club

The only good thing now is that in November of 2022, Glazers have started looking for options to sell the club, Sir Jim Ratcliffe and Qatari Sheikh Jassim are in the race of buying the club. And as of now, Qatari bidders are leading the race.